Monday, October 13th, 2003 - Letters to an Atheist

Last week sometime, I came across a site on the Internet written by an atheist, describing in detail his beliefs and perspectives. I don't think it's illegal to post a link to his website, so you can find it right here. After reading some of his opinions and responses to what Christians have written in telling him, I felt impressed to email him. I started out pretty casual and mellow in the first email, and he responded quickly asking me to elaborate and clarify, asking many questions. We have since been emailing back and forth over the weekend. It has not been a hostile argument at all; we are polite with each other and interested in learning each other's beliefs. It has been quite a blessing to learn, from his point of view, about atheism and why he has come to that conclusion. I just spent about 3 hours writing this one about the reliability of the Bible; when I pasted it into Microsoft Word, it was 4 pages single-spaced. Proceed only if you have a lot of time on your hands...

---------------- Start of letter ----------------
I'm going to start by saying that I think this email will be quite long by the time I am finished. The largest evidence for my belief in God and Jesus is personal experience; however, I think that you are looking for more concrete and scientific evidence, so I'm going to focus on the Bible and the evidence supporting it. Much of my perspective here is inspired or quoted from Josh McDowell's "The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict." This man set out several years ago as a skeptic fed up with Christians and their ramblings with the goal to prove the Bible incorrect, faulty, or inconsistent. In his in-depth search and examination, he came to conclude that the Bible is true in all that it says, and he became a Christian. Thus, he is an expert and I am not, so I use many of his studies and findings here.

The Bible is unique in that it is the only book: Written over a 1,500 year time span. Written by 40 different authors from all walks of life, from 3 different continents, at different times in culture, in 3 different languages, in a wide variety of moods and literary styles. McDowell continues that the Bible is unique in circulation, translation, survival, its teachings, and its influence. For the sake of brevity, I have not elaborated on these others; if you would like more support for these claims, McDowell continues about each of these in his book. In short, the Bible is proven to be unique significantly over all other books.

In terms of the New Testament, I'm going to mainly cover the external evidence supporting its reliability; I believe this is the part that you are more interested in. Many non-Christian ancient historians wrote texts aligning with Biblical and Christian teaching. Examples given by McDowell: Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, Thallus, Pliny the Younger, Emperor Trajan, Talmud, Lucian, Mara Bar-Serapion. I will quote a section from Josephus' writing quoted by McDowell; Josephus was a Jewish historian and a Pharisee, and Jesus repeatedly made statements in the New Testament that enraged the Pharisees. Josephus was from the group of people that sent Jesus to his death; arguably, the group most opposed to Jesus and his teachings. McDowell includes this excerpt from Josephus concerning Jesus:

"Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. For he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day. (Josephus, AJ, 18.3.3)" (McDowell, p. 57). I should note that it is clarified that Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

In a section concerning archaeology and scientific investigation of the New Testament, Sir William Ramsay is quoted in explaining his studies. He is described as "one of the greatest archaeologists ever to have lived;" he studied in Germany in the 1800's and believed that the Book of Acts was written later than it claimed. His goal was to disprove the authenticity of this book through archaeological evidence. I will quote directly from his own words in explaining what he found through archaeological study:

"I may fairly claim to have entered on this investigation without prejudice in favour of the conclusion which I shall now seek to justify to the reader. On the contrary, I began with a mind unfavourable to it, for the ingenuity and apparent completeness of the Tubingen theory had at one time quite convinced me. It did not then lie in my line of life to investigate the subject minutely; but more recently I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth.... (Blaiklock, LAENT, 36-quoted from Ramsay's book: St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen)" (McDowell, p. 62)

Many more examples continue to elaborate on the point that the New Testament is historically and scientifically accurate; you can discuss the credibility of the Bible's claim to be "God's very Word" or "inspired," but there is substantial evidence that the events in the New Testament actually happened. Reason and logic can be used to credibly believe that the documents are accurate. The real dispute comes at the significance of these events; sure, a man named Jesus lived and performed miracles and died on a cross, but was he really God? Was he really the Son of God that he claimed to be? Wasn't he just a lunatic who misled a lot of people into believing what he said?

Obviously, as you most likely are already aware, this cannot be proven one way or the other by scientific evidence. I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that fact. Most definitely, faith comes into play at some point here. Personally, my experiences with God are the large reason for my faith, and the historical and scientific evidence is not necessarily more convincing than that experience but rather is supplemental to my faith. One could find all the scientific evidence in the world and still not completely prove or explain God; He even confirms this in the Bible by saying that human comprehension cannot fully understand God and his love for humans. I believe that He inspired the writers of the Bible to explain all that we can understand with our human capacity, so that we may know God and His message for us. Paraphrased, God gave us the Bible and said "this is all you need to know, for now."

Now as for dealing with my personal relationship with God, I base this completely by one-on-one experience with God. I do remember you saying that you aren't interested in "miracle stories" or extravagant supernatural testimonies; only one of my experiences might be described by most people as one of this type. I, however, see almost all of my experiences every day as miracles; I think it is a miracle that I wake up each day in good health, that I am physically able to walk to the dining center and to class, that I am able to understand the world around me based on faith in what the Bible says about it, that I have been blessed with food and clothes and sanitary living conditions. I see all these as miracles and gifts from God. I might add here that even without such things, even if I had been born into a completely different lifestyle of poverty in a third-world country, God would not love me or bless me any less; He would simply choose to bless me in different ways.

It is not to say that those with an "unfortunate" or "difficult" life are denied or looked upon less by God. He gave all people free will to do whatever they want, and all of our misfortunes are based upon the results of the choices that we and other people make. The Bible says that God is there to help us through our circumstance to counter the negative consequences of choices. Why does God choose certain people and certain situations at certain times? In other words, why doesn't He just fix everything if He supposedly has the power to do it?

Human understanding cannot completely explain the answer. I believe that God does make right the wrongs, but I don't completely know the reasons behind His timing. Take the September 11th tragedy, for example (where God came under attack by many people). I believe that many people prayed to God that He would heal those hurt by this event. Many might say, "why did God even let it happen?" My take on this is that it was our own free will caused this; those who hijacked the planes did it because they wanted to do it. I believe that God did stop it; He just did it later than most people wanted Him to. Who's to say that the original plan didn't involve 20 planes with many more targets, and God chose to stop 16 of them? I'll be honest, I don't completely understand why He didn't prevent those 3 or 4 planes, as well; I'm not afraid to say when I don't have the answer.

I give you this perspective in closing: let's say that God chooses to "fix everything." He prevents every murder, He changes everyone's mind before they think of lying, He stops every abuse, rape, theft, and everything else considered "bad" or "immoral" from happening. He changes everyone's mind to believe in Him, He speaks in an audible voice to everyone so that no one would neglect to believe in Him and what the Bible says. Imagine that world: with the elimination of evil, there would be no good, since there is no benchmark by which to compare "good" or "bad" things. I believe it would be a very robotic and monotonous world, and here's the key: it would lack love. I think love would be eventually lost in all the monotony and lack of necessity for faith.

I can tangibly understand why God would not interfere in every situation, but I can't explain why He chooses the ones He does. That is up to Him and His plan; the Bible says that He died for us in order that we can have a relationship with and pray to Him in intercession of events that may have otherwised happened. Thus, prayer is not worthless; life would not happen exactly the same without it. It is possible that what God chooses to do and not do is based upon His great plan for everything combined with what people have said to Him in prayer.

I think I have, at last, said what I meant to get across. Christianity is based partly on faith, yes, but I wouldn't call it blind faith because of the evidence supporting the Bible, and more importantly, personal experience with God. If you would like me to share some of my personal experience, I would be glad to, but I won't if you don't want me to.
~Doug Rauterkus

P.S. I don't mind if you publish anything I have said, including my full name and email address, as long as it is said in the context that this is my opinion and my beliefs, and not "Christian authority." Let it remain the Bible and ultimately God is the only real authority.
---------------- End of letter ----------------

Back to Main Page